Column

Just when you think the headlines can’t get any more eye-popping, along comes a story about underarm hair for women making a comeback as a potential tool of empowerment.

There was a brief period when some women in the Flower Child movement grew underarm hair. But that was long ago and today those women are probably more concerned about thinning hair on top of their heads.

In any case, many things come to mind at the mention of empowering women but growing underarm hair has never been high on the list. It’s never been anywhere on the list. But that’s just me, and if you think underarm hair would be empowering, by all means go for it.

The only reason I lingered on that story is because I was scarred by a woman’s underarm hair years ago. I was giving birth at the time to our second child.

All our children were born in Oregon where nearly every woman delivered with a midwife, either at home or in a hospital. Strong women delivered at home; weak women delivered at the hospital. I was weak. Perhaps if I’d grown underarm hair. Oh well.

The beloved midwife I’d seen throughout my pregnancy was out of town and an on-call midwife attended my labor and delivery. She leaned over me as we settled into the birthing room and I noticed a tool of empowerment – armpit hair.

I knew then and there that I was toast. Not just plain toast, but 9-months-pregnant-and-about-to-deliver toast. Any chance of pain relief would be slim. I was dealing with an empowered non-shaving woman. But even as an unempowered shaving-woman, that did not stop me from asking if I might have something for the pain—or “discomfort,” which was the preferred term.

She said she didn’t think medication was necessary. Of course, she didn’t think medication was necessary; she wasn’t the one in labor.

She suggested I was tensing up (got that one right, sister!) and that I could ease the discomfort by relaxing my jaw.

Growing more empowered with each intense contraction, I responded that the pain was not in my jaw. The pain was nowhere near my jaw.

She said she understood, then told me that my face looked tense. That underarm hair must have been incredibly empowering, because no woman in her right mind risks telling another woman in hard labor that her face looks tense.

The details have grown fuzzy over time but, as I recall, the conversation about my discomfort escalated, the husband scrambled for cover behind a small bedside table, I relaxed my jaw and in turn was given a med, which I am pretty sure was a placebo.

I thanked the midwife for her assistance when the delivery was over. Then I cradled that baby girl close and told her not to worry about being born bald because she would grow up to be a strong woman no matter what.

If women’s underarm hair is growing (pun intended) in popularity, I predict it will be like so many other passing fads—hair today, gone tomorrow.

The vegetable garden yield this season is less than we hoped, but the corresponding weight loss has been a pleasant surprise.

Yesterday’s count on peas was 44. That was actual peas, not peapods.

The grandkids, taking great interest in the garden, were the ones who picked and shelled the most recent round. When we sat down to lunch, there were the 44 peas on the table in a small glass bowl, cooked and seasoned with butter, salt and pepper.

As the bowl circled the table, I thought maybe someone would pray that God would multiply the peas like Jesus multiplied the fish and the loaves, but no one did. The peas did not multiply.

Despite meager servings, everyone said they were the best peas they ever had, although I personally thought that No. 1, 2 and 3 were good, but No. 4 was tasteless.

I have often wondered how early settlers, and people today who truly live off the land, survive?  It was not on peas, I can tell you that.

Most likely they survived on cherry tomatoes. Ours are exploding. The basil is thriving as well, so if push comes to shove, we could live on bruschetta. Of course, that will be providing we find a plant that grows baguettes.

The cucumbers are so slow developing that if they don’t pick up some size soon, our hopes of cucumber sandwiches may be reduced to paper-thin slices of teeny, tiny cucumbers on croutons.

By contrast, the green beans are splendid. We had some for dinner the other night. They weren’t large servings, more like scant servings you get at high-end restaurants where they charge you more for serving you less.

In any case, when you’ve had fresh green beans, you lie awake at night wondering what it is they sell in the cans. They look like green beans, but they sure don’t taste like green beans.

It’s nice to have small helpers in the garden. My brother and I used to help our grandma around the farm sometimes. My brother liked gathering eggs. There were only two eggs one morning. Grandma handed them both to him and noticed he was holding them behind his back. When they got back to the house, the eggs were cracked.

“What happened?” she asked.

“They were fighting,” he said, age four. Some of your best storytellers are under the age of six.

I’m considerably over the age of six, but I may have told the youngest grand a tall tale when I said the raspberries we were picking were like candy.

“Pop one in your mouth,” I said. “They’re even better than candy.”

She popped one into her little mouth, ate it and broke a smile that could light the LaGuardia runway at night.

So then she had another and another and only five raspberries made it into the house, barely enough to keep two of the seven dwarfs alive.

You should see the teeny, tiny raspberry tart I plan on making.

The garden yield may be down, but the memories are growing just fine.

I ran into a friend recently who asked if I knew she had “quit” a year ago. She said she simply knew it was time and went “cold turkey.”

“Congratulations,” I said. “That’s amazing. Any withdrawal issues?”

“The FOMO (fear of missing out) was terrible,” she said. “I was restless and on edge, second-guessing my decision. Then came eating my way through stress. I gained weight, but I started sleeping better.”

Another friend confided that she has been tapering off gradually. “I don’t indulge until after 7 in the evening. Even then, I try to limit myself.”

She squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head as if reliving a bad dream.

What are they quitting? Social media. Mainstream media. Anything that glues you to a screen for hours on end, recycles the same stories at the top and bottom of the hour and ratchets up your blood pressure.

A neighbor put a total block on herself. No local news, no national news, no phone alerts, not even funny political memes in texts and emails for two weeks.

“It was refreshing,” she said. “I didn’t feel so agitated all the time or want to punch a hole in the wall. My husband said I even stopped thrashing in my sleep and yelling out, ‘Liar, liar!’ It was wonderful.”

She looked away, head down. A giant tear rolled down her cheek.

“What happened?” I asked.

“I fell off the wagon. I thought I’d just have a look. You know, just a little one. But then, one news website led to another news site— and—and —” She began sobbing gently.

“What is it?” I asked, putting my arm around her. “You can tell me.”

She wailed, shoulders heaving, nose running, tears smearing mascara.

“Oh, no. Tell me you didn’t!” I shrieked. “Did you?”

“Yes!” she wailed. “I began reading (sob) the (sob, sob) comments. WWAAAAAHHHHHH!”

Nothing can take you out faster these days than reading too far into the comments.

The issue is not whether there is bad news. There’s a bounty of it. The issue is the blaring megaphone that doesn’t just deliver the bad news, but amplifies it, intensifies it and relentlessly recycles it.

Every news story is a “breaking news” story.

Every piece of “new information,” is a “bombshell discovery.”

You find yourself worked up about crime in a small town in Iowa, but you don’t live in Iowa. You’ve never even been to Iowa.

This approach was once known as yellow journalism. It built empires.

Sensationalism keeps readers, viewers, clickers and scrollers coming back for more. Sensationalism drives traffic and traffic drives advertising rates.

Maybe it’s time to quit being driven and get in the driver’s seat.

Take some time to swap out your blue screen for a blue sky. The view will do you good. Your heart rate might even go down.

Spend face time with real friends in real life. A good friend is often a good counselor.

Break away from Twitter and find some real birds. They’re fabulous in the mornings. They might be shooting bad news back and forth, but thankfully you don’t speak bird.

We may have some budding entrepreneurs among us. We don’t know how. It didn’t come from our gene pool. I take that back. It may have.

Years ago, we were at a function where people were asked to share their first job. The husband recounted his venture into the wild world of fortune eggs. Age 8. His mother had shown him how to hollow eggs by tapping small holes in either end of a raw egg and blowing out the contents. He hollowed out some eggs, wrote fortunes copied from the daily horoscope on small slips of paper and inserted them into the empty shells.

He took them to school and sold them to his second-grade classmates. I don’t remember having pocket change in second grade. He must have traveled in affluent circles. In any case, he sold fortune eggs. Until the teacher put a stop to it.

If only the teacher had encouraged him. Who knows how wealthy we might have been today.

What entrepreneur hasn’t known the sting of defeat?

Our kids briefly ventured into the world of small business as youngsters with a Junior Achievement program. The girls made hair bows marketed under the name Bowtique. Our son made bug boxes. The takeaway from their experience was that expenses can quickly exceed profits.

Our son’s highest profit margin probably came when he was five and went door-to-door selling rocks to the neighbors for 50 cents a stone. I put the kibosh on that and a year later Pet Rocks became all the rage.

As a teen, he had 30-plus lawn customers when he left for college. He took a mower to campus with him hoping to continue the income stream. Soon after blanketing an upscale neighborhood with flyers promoting himself as a college student experienced in lawncare, he was contacted by the college administration office informing him that he could not use the University logo for business purposes. He’d unknowingly left a flyer at the home of the University President.

Now the next generation is dipping their toes in the water.

A half dozen grands sold goods at our neighborhood garage sale. The lemonade stand did quite well, most likely due to the pricing. The lemonade was free—but the cup cost 50 cents. Oh, and UPS, Amazon and FedEx drivers got free lemonade with unlimited refills. Our shoes still stick to the kitchen floor, but they made enough to buy pizza for dinner.

One offered handmade ink and wash notecards of river wildlife. Sales were less than brisk. I did my part. My quandary now is whether to use stationery of muskrats, otters and crawfish for birthday cards or sympathy notes.

One of the grands spent days before the sale cranking out cake pops, Oreo fudge and dog treats, each individually wrapped. Presentation is everything.

Her biggest sellers were the dog treats. Her biggest buyer may have been her brother. He made for great marketing, demonstrating how the dog treats made of peanut butter, whole wheat flour, applesauce, cinnamon and salt, were also edible for humans as people bought them for their dogs.

The baker cleaned up big time, netting a sizable bundle of bills. Unfortunately, not everyone can be a Warren Buffet. Still, it was a good experience, and all were pleased that the one who ate the dog treats did not bark in his sleep.

I witnessed the Boston Tea Party, the Battle at Concord and Paul Revere’s Ride.

You didn’t think I was that old, did you?

I was a kid at the time, living in a Kansas City, Missouri, neighborhood that went all out for the Fourth of July.

Old, fuzzy black and white snapshots of the Battle at Concord sharpen the memories. Red Coats are lined up in costumes that aren’t half bad if you can overlook the tie dress-shoes and long white socks pulled up over pant legs. They are wielding guns (not loaded) and a British flag.

Kids, more kids, tricycles, bicycles, baby strollers and women wearing Bermuda shorts line both sides of the street.

Lest you become confused, there is signage. Magic marker on a posterboard reads “Battle at Concord, April 19, 1775.”

A small bridge sits in the middle of the street. The Red Coats approach from one direction and the Minutemen from the other. The Minutemen fire and the British run like scared rabbits. Neither side suffers a single casualty—a slightly different outcome from the original Battle at Concord, but revisionist history had to start somewhere.

All that really mattered was that we whupped ‘em again.

A neighbor man, who had a horse pastured in the country, was the main act the year Paul Revere’s Midnight Ride was the featured attraction. Down the street he flew on his horse, tacatac, tacatac, past the letter drop mailbox, tacatac, tacatac, past a Plymouth Fury Suburban station wagon and a Corvair convertible, past kids waving flags, all the while shouting, “The British are Coming! The British are Coming!”

No one was overly concerned that the British were coming because we’d seen how they scattered like chickens the year before.

The most memorable of these gatherings was the year of the Boston Tea Party. Grown-ups worked hours in a neighbor’s garage building a ship on a platform on wheels. There was even a party table onboard the ship with a punch bowl and cups, courtesy of my mother. The crowd roared as crates of tea were heaved onto the blacktop. Our dad was onboard, heaving tea and celebrating with punch.

He took a nap in the front yard beneath the shade of an elm tree that afternoon. My mother mentioned that she had spiked the punch onboard the ship. Yes, she had taken liberties.

I have often wondered if the Fourth of July in our old neighborhood was over the top because so many in our neighborhood had served in World War II. Military service had been borne by the many in those days, not just a few.

They had seen the horrors of fascism with their own eyes, just as they had witnessed the bloody cost of freedom. Many bore some of those costs for a lifetime. Shared sacrifice yielded a strong pulsebeat of patriotism.

There were democrats, republicans, non-voters, white-collar and blue-collar workers among those staging the Fourth of July celebrations—but the differences among them were superseded by a love of country and deep respect and appreciation for freedom.

There is no perfect nation. There never has been and never will be. That said, we have always been a city shining on hill, a nation of possibilities, hopes and dreams. Maybe it’s possible that a respect for freedom and love of liberty will unite us again.

I am about to make my umpteenth trip to the grocery and am not happy about it. Having gathered my shopping essentials—wallet, car keys, cell phone, a list in illegible handwriting, reading glasses and a small chip on my shoulder, I hear a soft voice ask, “Grandma, can I go with you?”

Of course, she can’t go with me. She will slow me down. She will impede efficiency. Besides, if she goes, her brothers and sisters may want to go. This is not a field trip; it is a quick grocery run.

“Well, can I?” she asks.

“Sure,” I hear myself say. “Get your shoes.”

I help buckle her into the back seat, slip into the driver’s seat, start the car and hear a soft hum.

“I put my window down,” she cheerfully announces. “Grandma, don’t you want to put your window down?”

Hadn’t thought about it. The sun is shining and the humidity is low. It may be a near perfect day.  I put my window down. “I don’t usually drive with the windows down,” I say.

“Oh!” she gushes with excitement. “We drive with the windows down! But not on the highway. We have to put all the windows up on the highway. Are we going on the highway?”

“No, not on the highway, but we will be on a very busy street, so I’d like you to put your window up in a few blocks.”

“Grandma, do you know why I like the window down?”

“Why?”

“To feel the breeze, Grandma.”

We slow to a stop behind a long line of cars waiting for red to turn green.

“Oh, look, Grandma! Look at that lady’s steering wheel! It’s very pretty!”

The car next to us has a steering wheel cover made of solid bling that sparkles in the sun.

“Do you think she made it herself?” she gasps. The child is beholding one of the seven wonders of the world. “Maybe she bought all those sparkles at a garage sale and glued them on, one at a time.”

“Maybe.”

“Do you know why I like the window down, Grandma?”

“To feel the breeze?”

“Yes, but I also like to look for excavators. I saw 11.”

“When did you see 11 excavators?”

“Not all at one time, but I keep track of them and I’ve seen 11. You know what’s funny, Grandma?”

“What?”

“I thought you were turning into the store back there, but you were only getting on the other side of the road!”

It was not an abrupt lane change; the girl simply notices everything. I have a rare treasure in the back seat, one of the only human beings left on earth who absorbs the present and lives in the now. We arrive at the store, quickly gather what we came for and head home. Windows up.

“Grandma! Look at that car—that’s a cool car! That man has ALL his windows down!”

He is fortunate, the man in the sleek convertible with all the windows and the top down. But at this moment, on this day and in this traffic, I may be the most fortunate of all.

We turn into the neighborhood, put all the windows down and take the long way home.

I have found that one of the best ways to refurbish aging kitchen goods is to attend a pitch-in dinner. I have just returned from a large family gathering to which I took a spinach salad and came home with baked beans, watermelon and a slab of chocolate cake, all in durable glass containers with plastic lids that fit and are not cracked.

“Possession is nine-tenths of the law,” does indeed apply to dishware.

And, yes, I have a good idea the dishes belong to the daughter who hosted the gathering, but I also have a good idea she probably has some of my dishes, so I’m willing to call it a wash.

Well, the containers aren’t washed yet, but they will be soon.

Of course, pilfering from a family pitch-in is one thing and pilfering from a church pitch-in is another. People you share a faith with have expectations that you are honest about whom the dishes belong to. There is a silent understanding that you will abide by the 11^th commandment, “Thou shall not take home another’s empty 9 x 13, pretty platter or serving utensil.”

A friend once took home a pretty plate I had taken to a funeral dinner, a plate that had my name written on the bottom of it. She returned it several months later saying I had left without it, so she took it home and had enjoyed using it in the meantime. I was flattered she liked my taste in dishware. Besides, I have done similar things. (Far be it from me to cast the first salad fork.)

I once accidently brought home a pair of stainless-steel tongs after helping serve a church dinner. It was an inner-city church, a poor church that welcomes the downtrodden and the homeless, a church where one would want to come home thinking you had done some small measure of good, not looted the kitchen.

I put the tongs on a shelf intending to return them. Soon I found myself checking out the lock feature on the tongs. Fabulous. Mine hadn’t worked in years. Then I found myself using the tongs. Turning chicken breasts. Lifting spaghetti to see if it looked done. Pulling corn on the cob from boiling water. I switched from thinking I had “taken them” to I was “taking care of them.”

Isn’t that how it always starts? Tongs one day, grand theft auto the next.

Good thing for those church friends in the city that their commercial restaurant-grade warmer is bolted to the floor as I have always thought one of those would be nice to have, too.

I returned the tongs and am sleeping better, thank you very much.

These days, I’m toying with updating our KitchenAid mixer. Ours was a wedding gift some 40 years ago and overheats on high. Both of our girls and our daughter-in-law all have newer models. I wonder if any of them have written their names on the bottom.

The message painted on a car window in the parking lot said, “Honk!! Just Married—Venmo @. . . “ followed by a woman’s name.

Venmo is a popular app you can put on your phone to securely send and receive money from friends and family. It is widely used among younger people and handy for splitting a dinner tab, sharing the cost of a gift, and apparently for asking strangers to help foot the bill for your wedding.

Miss Manners and Emily Post never covered Venmo etiquette. If they had, I imagine their response would have been to put “please” at the end of the request plastered on your car window. Good manners are timeless.

My first response is that it was crass to ask random people to help pay for a wedding.

But I thought about it a little more, and a little bit more, and I wound up thinking, well, “Honk!! Just Bought Groceries! Venmo Me!”

“Honk!! Car Needs Fill-up! Venmo Me!”

“Honk!! Three grandkids with birthdays this month! Venmo Me!”

Suddenly, I had more messages to put on the car than the car had windows. Clearly, we’d need to get a bigger vehicle.

“Honk!! Just Bought New SUV! Venmo Me!”

High cost of living got you down? Can’t pay your bills? Demand others pay them for you!

Recently, financial gurus have advised people to calculate their personal rate of inflation as opposed to the 8 percent rate of inflation touted by the government.

Determine your monthly expenses for food, housing, clothing, transportation, medical care, recreation, education, etc., then, subtract your monthly spending a year ago from your current monthly spending and voila! you have your personal rate of inflation.

Everybody is feeling the squeeze. The husband announced he was going to take me somewhere expensive the other night. He took me to the gas station.

A year ago, our grandkids set up a lemonade stand to capitalize on the neighborhood garage sale. (We start our entrepreneurs young.) I carefully explained that their total intake, minus supply costs, would equal the profit. When I reminded them that the Walmart frozen lemonade was $1 a can, they did some quick figuring, followed by murmurs of watering down the lemonade and going heavy on the ice.

Wait until they find out that this year the same lemonade that was $1 last year is $1.25 this year. It will be multiplication, subtraction, decimal points and percentages rolled into one. Real-life math and real-life rate of inflation.

“Honk! Lemonade Up 25%! Venmo the Kids!”

 

Other parents brag about their kids who are doctors and lawyers. We brag about our kid who can tell what you had for breakfast.

Little did we know when we welcomed a baby girl into this world years ago that she would grow up to have a fantastic sense of smell.

She often fine-tunes this ability on her sister. She slowly approaches, circles once, sniffs twice and says, “You had bacon for breakfast, didn’t you?”

Told she is wrong, she leans in close then says, “Sausage!”

She’s good. Very good. It’s entertaining. Until it becomes scary.

It’s one thing when she can pinpoint a natural gas leak by the curb, but quite another when she asks when you changed your shampoo and conditioner. Not “if,” but “when.”

The last time we bought donuts she announced that whoever made them was a smoker. She insisted she could smell cigarette smoke mingling with the glaze. She was still sniffing while the rest of us were eating.

We all have our talents and quirks. Sometimes it is a fine line between the two.

She can smell horses after someone has been horseback riding, can walk in a house, deduce that the house was recently cleaned and guess what products were used with 90 percent accuracy.

Recently, she walked into our house and asked if I’d made bruschetta because she smelled basil.

If only there were a smell category on Jeopardy. “I’ll take herbs and kitchen smells for 1,000 please.”

As parents, we may have missed the boat. We could have guided her onto a career track for a perfumer or sommelier.

Her girls try to emulate her olfactory abilities. The other day one of them announced she smelled Spanish rice on me.

I said I was offended.

She said, “Don’t be offended, Grandma. Spanish rice is a very popular dish.”

It’s always reassuring to know I’m keeping up with the trends.

Her mother walked over and said it was not Spanish rice, it was garlic.

Bingo. I was wearing an apron I last wore making a stir fry.

Her girls may indeed have inherited her sense of taste and smell. From the time they were little, I would often set one of them on the counter to be a taste tester when making guacamole.

“More lemon juice? More cilantro?”

It was like having personal sous chefs—short sous chefs that were not allowed to use the stove or sharp knives, but still.

The other day our daughter with the nose that knows walked in and told her dad she could smell that he had been rummaging through old photo albums and books.

He had.

And she wonders why we sometimes keep our distance.

The official start to summer is still weeks away but the insects have already declared, “Game on!”

The husband was cutting the grass, felt something stinging his neck, smacked the back of his neck with his hand and discovered fire ants.

They were flat and one-dimensional, but you could still tell they were fire ants.

We have an entire plastic tub full of assorted insect repellents, citronella candles and battery-powered cannisters that emit some kind of waves that apparently play obnoxious music and send insects into your neighbors’ yards.

None of it works.

I’ve even tried powers of persuasion with the insects, posting little signs in the grass and shrubs that say, “Red Meat is Bad for You” and “Go Vegan!”

The response has been, well, crickets.

I can’t stand them either.

The signs weren’t great, but I made them up on the fly. Like they care. Or the mosquitoes or the gnats, or any of them.

So it is that I have once again reverted to my old standby, “Get them before they get you.”

It is a philosophy I came by some years ago after considerable itching, scratching, prescription ointments and a spider bite that festered and sporadically erupted in the crook of my arm for five long months.

Because I am aggressive with insects, I am the one the grandkids come to for expertise. They make for a good cheering section, but few of them are willing to embrace my methods.

“If it is tiny, you just make a fist and smack it,” I explain.

This is met with screaming, whimpering and gagging.

“If it is in the house, up high and out of reach, you get the vacuum and use the hose extension. It works 99.9 percent of the time, and the insect simply believes it has entered a wind tunnel ride at a theme park.”

We always have a few centipedes that make their way into the house after a wet spring, shooting out of a dark corner at night or early in the morning. You do not squash a centipede with a balled fist. You stomp it with your shoe and then you hop to the kitchen on one foot for six paper towels. One paper towel is to clean the remains of the centipede on the hardwood, the other five are for cleaning the bottom of your shoe.

The most dreaded insect is the nymph tick, a tiny tick the size of a poppyseed. Everyone in the family knows to check for them after being in the woods. It is a special challenge to check for tiny ticks on aging skin with all kinds of tiny freckles, moles and age spots. Even with a magnifying glass. Even for a dermatologist.

We have been to funerals where grandchildren have shared lovely memories of things their grandpa or grandma taught them – how to invest in the stock market, identify morel mushrooms, shoot baskets and drive a combine. I will be the grandma who taught kids how to kill bugs.

I’m just glad I’m still useful.